There are two names in the title, and there are 26 people listed in the credits. But make no mistake: "Ginger and Rosa" is all about one person. Her name is Elle Fanning.

The astonishingly talented 15-year-old actress -- featured in such films as "Because of Winn-Dixie," "Super 8" and "We Bought a Zoo" -- is the centerpiece of writer-director Sally Potter's very British coming-of-age drama, and she's the best reason to see it, too.

That says a lot considering she's working shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Timothy Spall and Annette Bening, but there it is. Gifted with a unique ability to portray schoolgirl charm every bit as believably as she does anguish and despair, the elfin Fanning single-handedly lifts Potter's film on her shoulders and carries it along.

It's a good thing, too, because while "Ginger and Rosa" boasts all sorts of attractive window dressing -- starting with that cast, as well as Potter's eye for poetic visuals and a cool jazz soundtrack that includes New Orleans' own Sidney Bechet -- there's not much meat to the story. So while the picture on the menu suggests filet mignon, we really get mostly fish-and-chips stuff.

Fanning plays Ginger, a young girl growing up in 1962 England who loves to iron her hair and giggle endlessly with her lifelong best friend, Rosa (played nicely by Alice Englert, who last year shot "Beautiful Creatures" in New Orleans). Increasingly, though, Ginger is having trouble finding any sort of fulfillment in such childhood things. Some of that, of course, is just a function of growing older -- but also there's the fact that, an ocean away, the Cuban Missile Crisis is playing out -- and Ginger is smart enough to recognize the potential global impact of that historic standoff. ("We could all be dead tomorrow.")

In addition to giving Ginger something to wring her hands over, the missile crisis provides Potter with a central metaphor for her story, albeit an obvious one. That's because, just as the world teeters on the brink of annihilation, Ginger's own little nuclear family is edging closer and closer to a doomsday of its own. But while she's more than willing to pick up peace signs and join anti-nuclear marches -- encouraged by her gay "uncles" (Spall and Oliver Platt) and their activist friend (Bening) -- she can only watch helplessly as her free-spirit father (Alessandro Nivola, "Who Do You Love?") and her heartbroken mother (Christina Hendricks, "Mad Men") drift closer and closer to an inevitable split.

And then comes a family crisis that nobody saw coming -- except for everybody in the theater, that is -- and Ginger isn't at all equipped to handle it. No girl would be, in fact.

That's when Potter's glorified soap opera is at its soap-opera-est. But it's also when Fanning -- who for the most of the movie restricts herself only to portraying bottled-up angst -- gets to let the emotion pour out. And she does. And it's something to see.

One gets the feeling that if any other actor had been cast in the role, "Ginger and Rosa" would have been easily dismissed as so much forgettable period melodrama. With Fanning, though, it becomes something else -- something earnest, something touching and, in its best moments, something memorable.

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GINGER AND ROSA2 stars, out of 5

Snapshot: A coming-of-age
drama, set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, about a
young girl in 1962 England who is struggling to come to terms with her
parents' ill-fated marriage.

What works: The gifted Elle Fanning turns in an extraordinary performance.

What doesn't: Beneath it all, the film is built on a flimsy, soap-opera story.